DISCLAIMER: I do not own Doctor Who or anything related to it.

SUMMARY: Set after the episode "Waters of Mars" and before "The End of Time". Tejana, the Doctor's daughter, is living in Cardiff and working with Torchwood, when her father turns up unexpectedly and asks her to go with him in the TARDIS for "just one trip". But travelling with the Doctor is never that simple and, as usual, things spiral out of control. So what exactly were the Doctor and Tejana doing when the 456 came to Earth, leaving Jack, Gwen and Ianto to face the alien threat on their own? And why did the Doctor name a galaxy 'Alison'? Maybe because, some days, no matter how hard he tries, not everybody lives. This is that story.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic is a prequel to my "One Moment in Time" series. However, since it is a prequel, new readers can probably read this one first if they wish, without getting lost - so go ahead!

This story is written as a "thank you" kiriban for the amazing SlytherinPrincess13, who is an incredibly talented artist and has very kindly done some stunning artwork for "The Master's Rose" - it's a gorgeous picture of the Master and Tejana together. The link is on my profile page, so PLEASE, go and check it out, you won't be sorry. And PLEASE leave her some feedback, either on here or on her DA page, because she is a young artist just starting out and really needs to be told how talented she is.

Thanks also to Aietradaea, who chatted through the plot of this fic with me and made some terrific suggestions! It will be a multi-chapter ficlet, in the same sort of short chapter style as "A Deadly Assassin", (if you have read that one), so it would be great if you could follow along! If it all works out, it may also end up being a series, who knows? Hope you enjoy!

CHAPTER ONE

Wearily, Tejana sat on the edge of her bed, trying to summon enough energy to peel off her clothes and climb under the covers. She had not slept for seven days and her eyelids kept slamming shut from sheer exhaustion. In the far off distance, she could hear a clock tower striking the hour – two o'clock in the morning, the darkest and most depressing part of the night. Down below her high-rise apartment building, the streets of Cardiff were wreathed in a chilling mist, drifting and curling through the city like insubstantial grey fingers.

It had been a very long week. The Rift had been unusually active and Torchwood – or what was left of it – had been flat out tracking down and dealing with various alien infestations. Tejana rubbed tiredly at her temples, trying to ease the persistent headache that throbbed there. Owen and Tosh had been dead for nearly four months now, but the team still could not seem to get back their previously smooth working rhythm. It was as though two essential cogs had dropped out of their machinery, cogs that could not be replaced. Tejana couldn't decide which of them she missed most – loud, brash, sarcastic, confident Owen, who had both annoyed and amused her in equal measure; or methodical, softly-spoken, logical, brilliant Tosh, whose quiet strength had subtly supported the team in ways they had not even realised until she was gone.

Resolutely, Tejana turned her mind away from her dead friends. The loss was still too raw and it hurt too much, especially in the lonely silence of the night. That was the worst part about leaving The Hub and coming home to sleep – having to be on her own. Gwen went home to her husband Rhys, while Jack and Ianto had each other. But Tejana had no-one. She sat perfectly still, listening, hearing nothing at all. The emptiness of the apartment seemed to press around her like a black hole. She sighed deeply. It was back again, that aching void inside her that she could never fill, the strange restlessness that always drove her onwards, forever seeking something that was missing, something that she couldn't find. For a while, working at Torchwood had seemed to help, but now she was getting itchy feet again, that feeling that something...someone...was out there waiting for her, if only she looked hard enough and long enough...

Tejana shook herself. She was tired, she was being stupid. After all, she had been looking for nearly six hundred years, ever since she had first looked into the Untempered Schism – there was nothing more out there. And right now, Jack and his team needed her. Now was not the time to go wandering again. Stripping off her clothes, she snuggled down into bed, both hearts inexplicably heavy. She was so tired that she was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow.

Less than two hours later, she sat bolt upright, her mind fighting to focus as it was forcibly dragged from sleep. Something had awakened her, some sort of noise, something that didn't belong...or had she just been dreaming? Her mouth went dry, her body tight with tension as her senses told her that the emptiness within the apartment had disappeared. She was no longer alone.

But then, as the fog of sleep cleared from her brain, her limbs relaxed and a small, affectionate smile curved her lips. Jumping out of bed, she wrapped herself in her soft towelling robe and padded towards the bedroom door. Pushing it open, she blinked owlishly in the flood of white moonlight pouring through the kitchen window. Sure enough, as her vision adjusted, she saw a blue police box standing in the corner of the living room, casting a long narrow shadow across the carpeted floor.

"'Ello!" said a cheerful voice.

A man was tilted back in one of her kitchen chairs, his lanky frame dressed in a blue-pinstriped suit, a pair of grubby red Converse sneakers plonked casually on her polished oak table. He had brown, spiky hair, long sideburns, intelligent brown eyes and a wide grin. A long brown coat had been tossed over the back of another chair.

"Hello, Doctor," she greeted him, sleepily pushing her unruly black hair out of her eyes. "What are you doing here? What's wrong?"

He sat up straight, a mock expression of hurt plastered across his face. "Can't a father drop in to see his daughter unannounced without there automatically being something wrong?"

"When it's you and me? Um, no, not usually," she responded wryly.

"Not interrupting anything, am I?" he asked, indicating her robe.

"Yeah, me sleeping, as it happens," she replied, coming over to the table to sit beside him. "It is nearly four in the morning, you know."

He looked pointedly behind her at the darkened door of her bedroom. "I mean, if Jack's here, I could just..."

Tejana rolled her eyes. "Jack's not here. He's probably tucked up very cosily with Ianto, right now. You are so obvious, you know that? How many times do I have to tell you that there's nothing going on between me and Jack before you believe me?"

The Doctor simply grinned, a virtual picture of innocence. "At least once more!"

"You know, some people would get sick of being so impossible, but I have to give you credit, you just keep on keeping on!" she said tartly.

"So...how about a trip in the TARDIS, then?" he asked in a bright tone, jumping to his feet and pacing around the room, his hands jammed in his pockets like an eager small boy. "You up for it?"

She stared at him in bewilderment, her eyes narrowed as she tried to fathom what was behind his abrupt request. "What?"

"You...me...the TARDIS...flying around the Universe," he replied, speaking slowly and loudly as though she was intellectually impaired. "Just the two of us, like old times. Father and daughter, last of the Time Lords, all that stuff. It'll be brilliant!"

"Just the two of us?" she queried. "Where's everyone else? You had a TARDIS full of people when Jack and I left with Mickey and Martha."

"They left too," he said curtly, a brooding look in his eyes. "Sarah Jane went back to her son. I left Rose and the clone back in the parallel universe, with Jackie. And Donna...her mind was burning. I had to wipe her memory and take her home to Chiswick. I've been travelling on my own ever since."

Tejana could hear the undercurrent of pain in his voice, an eerie echo of the devastating loneliness she had been feeling earlier. Leaving Donna behind had obviously hurt him very badly. And to lose Rose again, for the second time...a wave of sympathy rushed though her. "I'm sorry, Doctor."

The Doctor shrugged, the movement hunched and tense, as though his shoulders were too tight. "Well...it's probably for the best. A bit of solitude never hurts, you know. Helps to clear the head!"

His daughter watched him keenly. She would never use the psychic link to intrude where she was not invited, but even without it, she could still sense the unusually turbulent rise and fall of his emotions. There was something more, she could feel it. Some desperate need had driven him here tonight, seeking the comfort of her company, some hidden wound deep inside.

"What happened, Doctor?" she asked gently. "Why are you really here?"

For a moment, he said nothing and she wondered if he was going to answer. But then he retraced his steps back to the chair and sat down again opposite her, his head in his hands. "I did some things..." he said, his voice not much more than a choked whisper. "I was wrong. I should never have...I went too far."

"What things?"

"I went to Mars. 21 November 2059, Bowie Base One. Captain Adelaide Brooke and her team. It was a fixed point in time. They were supposed to die. I should have left. I was going to, I really, really was, I tried, I walked away...but I could hear them dying, over the comm-unit in my suit." His face twisted in pain and grief, his eyes unseeing as he relived it all again. "All I could think about was that we were the last – you and me, the last of the Time Lords. It's all gone now, all of it, forever. They're all dead. There's no-one left to care about maintaining fixed points in time, no-one but us. All at once, I just felt this...rage, this bitter, all-consuming fury. So I turned back. And I saved them, because I could, because I had that power, that right. I took them back to Earth in the TARDIS. And I was so proud of myself. I wasn't just a survivor any more, I was the winner – I was the Time Lord Victorious, the Oncoming Storm, the Destroyer of Worlds, the Bringer of Darkness - there was nothing I couldn't do, I had beaten Time itself! I actually expected them to be grateful."

Compassion twisted her hearts. "And they weren't?"

His eyes filled with tears. "Adelaide Brooke – human Adelaide Brooke - knew better than I did. She took her own life, to preserve the time-line, to ensure the future of the Earth. Instead of allowing that brave woman to die as the hero she deserved to be, I manipulated her into shooting herself, just to feed my overwhelming ego."

Tejana didn't know what to say to him, she had no words. His utter anguish seemed to shimmer in the air between them. Hesitantly, she reached out and put her hands over his, trying to give him some comfort, soothing him with the warmth of her touch. His fingers closed tightly around hers, almost desperately.

"And the more I thought about it, you know the thing that frightened me most?" he continued hoarsely.

"What?"

"I sounded like him. That need to dominate, to control everything, to have the ultimate power over life and death - 'The laws of Time are mine and they will obey me', that's what I said. Those are his words, not mine."

Tejana felt a shiver pass over her skin. She didn't need to be told who he was talking about. The Master. The only other Time Lord to survive the Great War. The Time Lord who had died rather than regenerate, out of hatred and spite for the Doctor.

"You don't...you don't still blame yourself for his death, do you?" she asked quietly, not really wanting to hear the answer.

He gave a short bark of bitter laughter. "Why not? I couldn't save him, any more than I could save any of the others."

"Some people won't allow themselves to be saved," she told him, her voice taut and brittle. "It was his choice."

The Doctor shook his head. "Sometimes I wonder if he ever really had a choice, once he looked into the Untempered Schism. Those drums in his head...I should have helped him back then, when we were kids, back on Gallifrey. But instead I left him behind and now he's dead. How is that not my fault?"

Tejana closed her eyes, the headache pulsing through her brain again as she unwillingly remembered - that hard, lean body against hers; the hot, disturbing desire in those brown eyes; his mouth, so close to hers, so very close...Abruptly, she pulled her hands away from her father and got to her feet, heading into the tiny kitchen.

"I'll make us a cup of tea," she said over her shoulder. "I think we could both do with one."

She knew she was being a coward, running away from the conversation, but she really didn't want to talk about the Master. He was dead. She was glad. End of story.

"Thank goodness for tea," the Doctor responded wryly, running his hands over his face, already pulling himself together, as if he was slightly ashamed of his emotional outburst. "I love tea - brilliant stuff! What would the Universe do without tea? I'm so glad I wasn't born before they invented tea."

She brought over two steaming cups and put them carefully on the table. He took a big slurp of his tea and grinned at her again. "Look at you," he said teasingly, as if the previous emotion-filled moments had never happened. "You've gone all human on me."

Grateful for the change of subject, she retorted, "I have not."

"Oh, you have!" he insisted. "Cups of tea. A real job with Torchwood. A snug little flat. I bet you've even got a mortgage."

"Well, you'd be wrong, Doctor Smarty-pants," she answered in a lofty tone. "Torchwood bought this place for me outright. No mortgage."

"What about your fridge? I bet you've got mouldy cheese in your fridge. Humans always have mouldy cheese in their fridge," he continued, jumping up and crossing across to her stainless steel refrigerator. With a flourish, he pulled open the door, revealing the limited and rather pathetic contents, his eyes lighting up with triumph. "Ah ha! See, I told you. Mouldy cheese!"

Laughing despite herself, Tejana slammed the fridge door closed. "You really are impossible!"

"It's a gift!" he said complacently. Then the merriment left his eyes as he looked steadily down into her face. "So...are you coming? In the TARDIS?"

Tejana swallowed hard. With both of her hearts, she wished she could say yes. But she couldn't, could she? She had responsibilities. People were depending on her. "I...can't."

"Oh, go on, just one trip!" the Doctor urged. "What can it hurt?"

"No, really, I can't. With Owen and Tosh dead, Torchwood is stretched far too thin. They need me, Doctor. Jack needs me. I just can't leave them right now."

For a moment, he just stared down at her. Then he nodded with a sad smile. "Of course. I understand. Silly of me, I suppose. Well...I suppose I'd better get on, let you get some more sleep." He kissed her quickly on the forehead. "Thanks for listening. And for the tea. I'll see you again soon."

Picking up his coat, he gave her a wave and strode towards the TARDIS, his tall, thin figure somehow lonely in the moonlight. Tejana thought of how empty the flat had seemed before he arrived, how drained and lifeless it would be all over again, after his vibrant presence had departed.

"Doctor, wait!" she cried.

He turned back, his eyebrows raised inquiringly.

"It'd be just one trip, right?"

He nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes. Definitely. Just one trip."

"And you'll get me back here before I'm due to start work at the Hub tomorrow?"

"Absolutely. Perfectly on time. No-one will even know you've been gone. Promise!"

She sighed. "I've heard that before. I must be crazy, but all right. Just one trip. Let me get changed and I'll come with you."

The Doctor beamed, his entire face alight with child-like delight.

"But I'm leaving a note for Jack, just in case," she added warningly. "I know you too well."

"Nonsense!" he replied, waving his hand in a dismissive fashion. "What could possibly go wrong?"

"Famous last words," she muttered, reaching for a pen and paper anyway. "Like I said, I've heard that before."

Shortly thereafter, the quiet flat echoed with the wheezing sound of the departing TARDIS engines and the blue police box disappeared, leaving the vacant living room to the silence of the night and the soft, uninterrupted radiance of the moonlight. On the table, anchored by the Doctor's half-drunk cup of tea, was a note.

"Dear Jack. Gone for a quick trip with the Doctor. Don't worry, back soon. Love Tejana. XXX."

Another Author's Note: Don't forget to check out Slytherin-Princess13's stunning fan-art and please make sure you give her some feedback, you will make us both very happy XXX.